CITY SCENE is a series of snap­shots taken in the streets and squares of a Bei­jing prepar­ing for the Olympic Games. The film­mak­er cap­tures every­day real­i­ty in static shots: leisure activ­i­ties, street scenes, latent vio­lence. The long, con­tin­u­ous and care­ful­ly framed shots draw atten­tion to places and details, to the way the people there move and inter­act. Zhao Liang makes impres­sive use of cinema’s capac­i­ty to make real­i­ty vis­i­ble as it is.